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Americans love their iPhones (though
sometimes they wish they could live without them)
[May 13, 2026]
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE
SAN
FRANCISCO (AP) — The American obsession with the iPhone is complicated,
as most love-hate relationships are.
It sometimes seems like a talisman so magical that we can't fathom
living without all the pleasures and conveniences that it bestows almost
anytime or anywhere. The iPhone, and its smartphone brethren, enable
pictures that can be posted instantly on social media. We can play a
game, watch a video, listen to music, send a text, check email, surf the
internet, catch up on on the news, get directions, tap to pay.
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Apple CEO Steve Jobs holds up an Apple iPhone at the MacWorld Conference
in San Francisco on Jan. 9, 2007. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File) |
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Oh
— and, every once in a while, we can even make or answer a phone
call.
At other times, the iPhone seems like a drug-dealing pusher
preying on our weaknesses and worst impulses while deepening our
addiction to its endless stream of notifications and alerts that
lure us into gazing at its screen as our attention spans become
increasingly shorter.
It's a paradox that is confronting America while the iPhone is
still a teenager, inhabiting the same demographic that it may
have impacted the most. The device wasn't even born until 2007,
when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs strolled across a stage to
promise a mesmerized audience that they were about to see
something that would change everything.
And it kind of did. Jobs, as often was the case before his 2011
death, proved to be eerily prescient — so much so that surveys
have found a substantial number of people would pick sleeping
with their iPhone instead of their lovers, if forced to make a
choice.
The challenge now: figuring out if there is a better way to
manage our complicated relationship with the iPhone and
smartphones running on Google's Android software in a society
that almost requires everyone to possess one. Is there a way to
preserve all the benefits while preventing toxic habits? Is it
fair to categorize its use alongside that of cigarettes, alcohol
and junk food?
For the moment, at least, America seems to be drifting further
down a digital river that evokes the closing passage from one of
the greatest American novels of all: So we scroll on, boats
against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the glowing
screen.
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